The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots Author(S): Rachel Haywood Ferreira Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol

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11-2007 The irsF t Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots Rachel Haywood Ferreira Iowa State University, [email protected]

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Abstract This essay examines three of the earliest works of Latin American sf together for the first time: "México en el año 1970" [Mexico in the Year 1970, 1844, Mexico], Páginas da história do Brasil escripta no anno de 2000 [Pages from the History of Brazil Written in the Year 2000, 1868-72, Brazil], and Viaje maravilloso del Señor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte [The aM rvelous Journey of Mr. Nic-Nac to the Planet Mars, 1875-76, Argentina]. Nineteenth-century works such as these have been added to the genealogical tree of Latin American sf in recent years. The dda ition of pre-space-age texts to the corpus of Latin American sf does more than provide its writers and readers with local roots: it broadens our understanding of the genre in Latin America and the periphery; it extends our perceptions of the role of science in Latin American literature and culture; and, together with later Latin American sf, it contributes new perspectives and new narrative possibilities to the genre as a whole.

Disciplines Latin American Literature

Comments This article is from Science Fiction Studies 34 (2007): 432–462. Posted with permission.

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Rachel Haywood Ferreira

The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots

we Now have a historical consciousness of belonging to a global movement and, at the same time, we respond to this world science fiction movement with our own characteristics, with notable antecedents and with distinctive, complementary aspirations.?Trujillo Mufioz, Biograflas355 Retrolabeling the Early Works of Latin American SF IfHugo Gernsback's first act in the inaugural issue of Amazing Stories was to choose the term thatwould eventually become "science fiction" to designate the type of works thathis magazine published, his second act was to use that term retroactively to label?or retrolabel?a body of existing texts that he felt belonged to the same tradition: "By 'scientifiction,'" he states, "Imean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story?a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" (3).1 Although the genealogy of science fiction has been actively traced in its countries of origin since themoment Gernsback formally baptized thegenre,2 inLatin America this process did not get underway until the late 1960s and is still a work in progress. Like all such bibliographical processes, the effort to retrolabel Latin American sf has in part been the result of a desire for the stature and legitimacy that identifiable ancestors bestow upon their descendants. While Latin Americans c an point to northern hemisphere antecedents for their science fiction and claim that established pedigree as their own, their late twentieth- and early twenty-first century search for a more direct national or continental sf family tree represents a desire for evidence that science fiction has been a global genre from itsearliest days, thatLatin America has participated in thisgenre using local appropriations and local adaptations, and that this participation is one way in which Latin America has demonstrated a continuing connection with literary, cultural, and scientific debates in the international arena. But as an examination of three nineteenth-century texts from Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina reveals, the addition of pre-space-age texts to the genealogical tree of Latin American sf does more than provide itswriters and readers with local roots: itbroadens our understanding of the genre in Latin America and the periphery; it extends our perceptions of the role of science inLatin American literature and culture; and, togetherwith laterLatin American sf, itcontributes new perspectives and new narrative possibilities to the genre as a whole. From the nineteenth century to the present day, the sf tradition/genrehas proved to be an ideal vehicle for registering tensions related to national identity and themodernization process inLatin America. The challenge of constructing and/or maintaining a national identity in the face of significant input and influence from the North has been a constant. Latin America has also consistently existed ina state of what Garcia Canclini has termed "multitemporal heterogeneity" due to theuneven assimilation of technology (47). M. Elizabeth

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Ginway's metaphor of science fiction as "a barometer tomeasure attitudes toward technology while at the same time reflecting the social implications of modernization in Brazilian society" is equally apt in describing a key function of sf in Spanish America (Brazilian 212). Association with the genre can be more costly today than in the nineteenth century, however. Having theirwork carry the sf label has often been a double edged sword for Latin American writers inmore recent years. If the name recognition of science fiction brings them an easily identifiable genre home and a ready-made reader base, that reader base is still relatively small.3 The label often draws charges of having "associations with 'low art' and popular fiction" (Ginway, Brazilian 29), of being a party to cultural imperialism, and of failing to reflect local realities. (It should be said thatwith the contemporary boom in thewriting and criticism of Latin American sf, and with a shiftingof genre tides away from the predominance of shiny, rocket-launched visions of the future, contemporary writers and promoters of the genre in Latin America are better able to defend themselves against such charges.)4 In the nineteenth century, however, sf was not so thoroughly perceived as an external genre thatwas unrelated toLatin American realities, nor had such strong links yet been forged between sf and popular culture. Rather than themore recent association with mass culture, science-fictional texts in the nineteenth centurywere read almost exclusively by the literate elite classes. They tended to be published in newspapers and magazines, and any Vernian didacticism was lauded as providing scientific knowledge to the reading public. While many writers in the young nations of Latin America sought to establish and make contributions to their countries' bodies of national literature in the nineteenth century, still itwas more acceptable to have the works of Northern writers as literary influences. This was a time inLatin America when the political, economic, cultural, scientific?and even racial?characteristics of as northern European nations such Britain, France, and Germany were often touted as models forbringing progress to, or "civilizing," the "barbarous" Latin American nations. The US was viewed as an example of a nation that had successfully applied thesemodels in theNew World. Thus an association with literary genres of Northern origin such as the Utopia, the fantastic voyage, futuristic fictions, the scientific romance?genres thatwere fast coalescing into the sf tradition?was more likely to increase than to decrease the cachet of a text. The nineteenth centurywas also the time inLatin America inwhich scientific discourse was the supreme guarantor of truth. In Myth and Archive, his landmark study of Latin American narrative, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria describes what he has termed the "hegemonic discourse of science" as "the authoritative language of knowledge, self-knowledge, and legitimation" inLatin America (103).5 This legitimating power of scientific discourse would imbue textswritten in the nascent science-fictional genre with an additional authority originating outside the texts themselves. As in the twenty-first century, nineteenth-century Latin American nations were rarely producers of original scientific research, so the source of this authority would necessarily be

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associated with the North. While Northern influence in science as well as literature is sometimes seen as doubly damning inLatin American sf today, this was much less the case a hundred and fortyyears ago. Gonzalez Echevarria addresses one importantaspect of influence?the non American component of hybrid/mestizo/post-colonial Latin American cultures:

It does not escape me that the hegemonic discourse described here comes from "outside" Latin America; therefore Latin America appears to be constantly explaining itself in "foreign" terms, to be the helpless victim of a colonialist's language and image-making. There is a level at which this is true and deplorable. However, in Latin America, in every realm, from the economic to the intellectual, the outside is also always inside.... Latin America is part of the Western world, not a colonized other, except in founding fictions and constitutive idealizations. (41-42)

This is to say, political independence from European colonial powers did not completely divorce Latin Americans, especially Latin American elites, from theirEuropean roots. Another key aspect of the status of Latin American nations as importers of science in the nineteenth century is that this dependence was expected to be short-lived. The mid- to late-nineteenth century was a time of nation building and of great real and/or perceived national potential inLatin America. It is not a coincidence that a majority of the earliest works of Latin American science fiction are Utopian in flavor, including our three texts. The Argentina of the 1870s-1880s, during which Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg (1852-1937) wrote Viaje maravilloso del Senor Nic-Nac [The Marvelous Journey ofMr. Nic-Nac, hereafter Nic-Nac, 1875-76], showed imminent promise of joining the first world: "Compared to other Latin American countries," Julia Rodriguez writes inCivilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and theModern State, "Argentina was surging ahead. It appeared that the nation had a chance to reach the levels of prosperity and development of itsnorthern neighbor, theUnited States" (2). Another of our writers, Joaquim Felicio dos Santos (1828-95), put Brazil as potentially on a par with theUnited States in his textPdginas da historia do Brasil escripta no anno de 2000 [Pages from theHistory of Brazil Written in the Year 2000, hereafter Brasil 2000, 1868-72] "due to its [geographical] position and natural resources" (Brasil 2000, Feb. 21, 1869).6 Although our third text, "Mexico en el ano 1970" ["Mexico in the Year 1970," hereafter "Mexico 1970," 1844], was written in a time and place which were somewhat less inspiring of optimism than the previous two, advances in technology, primarily in the areas of transportation and communication, also permitted its pseudonymous author "Fosforos-Cerillos" to view progress as eminently attainable for his nation. Texts written in the sf tradition in nineteenth-century Latin America, then, would not have been perceived as pale imitations of imperialistic literarymodels, but as works that described the present with the authority of scientific discourse and reached for the brighter future that seemed destined to come.

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Out of Chaos, Utopia: Patterns and Commonalities in the Production, Publication, and Form/Content of Three Founding Works of Early Latin American SF When these three early Latin American textswere originally published, readers would certainly have recognized the "loose bonds of kinship" between them and textswritten by the founding fathers and mothers of Northern sf. The clearest indications of these kinships are the use of the tropes of time and space displacement, direct citations of theworks and ideas of Northerners in the texts themselves, and the advertisement published by the newspaper El Nacional promoting the forthcoming book version of Nic-Nac as a narrative thatwould awaken "the same interestas any of the best novels of this genre coming from the pen of the popular Jules Verne" (Mar. 13, 1876).7 Only in the last fifteen years, however?after over a century of being lost and found and re-lost and re found?have "Mexico 1970," Brasil 2000, and Nic-Nac come to be definitively and universally recognized and retrolabeled as some of the earliest examples of Latin American science fiction.8 In recent years the threehave frequently been cited as such, the individual texts have often been referred to in prefaces and articles and have occasionally been analyzed in greater detail, but they have never been considered in conjunction. Despite the undeniable diversity of the national histories, cultures, and literary contexts from which the three texts emerged, major commonalities among Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina contribute to distinct patterns of similarity in the three texts: Iberian colonial pasts, unequal modernities, location on the periphery of political influence and scientific research, and the centrality for each country of issues of national identityand Northern influence. Before continuing to an examination of the uniqueness of each text in greater detail, itmight be useful to outline some of the parallels among these threeworks. Northrop Frye has said, "The Utopia form flourishes best when anarchy seems most a social threat" (27). These three Utopian texts all emerged during conditions of national unrest (with at least two of them published in specific response to political events), although, as discussed above, a more ideal society also seemed to lie just over the horizon. All of the tales set their Utopian societies in locations remote either in time or in space, using these devices of displacement to achieve Suvin's effect of cognitive estrangement of thewriter's own reality. One function of thedisplacement of the Utopia in space or time has been explained by Frye: or The desirable society, the Utopia proper, is essentially the writer's own society with its unconscious ritual habits transposed into their conscious equivalents. The contrast in value between the two societies implies a satire on the writer's own society, and the basis for the satire is the unconsciousness or inconsistency in the social behavior he observes around him. (27)

As Suvin puts it,Utopia's "pointings reflectback upon the reader's 'topia'" (51). These texts, then, sought to pinpoint areas that required improvement in order for theirnations to join the forefrontof world progress and takewhat their writers felt to be their rightfulplaces near the center of the international stage. Thus, the oft-cited function of the science-fictional text as an agent to bring

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about change would have been particularly attractive to our threewriters, as all were active participants in theprocesses of nation building and consolidation in theirhome countries.9 All threewriters were also informed about the scientific and technological advances of the day, and they viewed these advances as one of theprincipal means to national progress. Lastly, all were writers for national or regional newspapers and magazines, and at least two of the threewere also editors. All threewere originally published in these rather ephemeral media, and even as Utopias, futuristicfictions, and/or serial publications of fiction go, they are particularly localized both temporally and geographically. I.F. Clarke has described authors of early Northern sf as writing "for the nation and for the world" and as having "an international audience for their stories" (xiii). Latin American authors, however, did not feel included in these descriptions of the future, and so they wrote their own. The resulting works, which were so narrowly time-stamped and place-stamped, are less about showing humanity a broad vision of Utopia than about bringing Latin American nations forward, catching them up to the Northern nations. Once thiswas accomplished, our writers appear to be saying, Latin Americans would be able to describe and/or be described by a more general vision of what was to come. As is often the case in Utopian tales, all three texts are, to varying degrees, framed narratives. The nineteenth-century or Earth-based outer frames work togetherwith othermetafictional, realistic, and fantasticnarrative devices?such as footnotes, epigraphs, sessions of spiritism, and the inclusion of real, extrapolated, and fabricated texts, events, and figures?to emphasize theirown fictionalitywhile at the same time claiming the authority lent by their use of historical fact and scientific discourse.10 The narrative frames also create what Paul K. Alkon has described as "a twofold narration that proceeds simultaneously along [two different] time tracks": a "double temporal perspective" in the case of our two futuristic fictions, a double spatial perspective in the case of theplanet-hopping Nic-Nac (Alkon, Origins 125).n It is no coincidence thatDon Quijote ismentioned directly in two of the texts, not for the science-fictional episode of thecosmic voyage aboard thehorse Clavilefio described byMarjorie Hope Nicolson in her Voyages to theMoon (18-19), but rather for Cervantes's magisterial use of the framed narrative and for the episode of themarvelous journey into theCave ofMontesinos. The sociocultural, political, and literary influences of Europe and theUnited States are central to the form and content of these works. All of the authors portray the estranged, Utopian versions of theirown nations as strong, politically independent, culturally rich, and globally important,12yet each text betrays in some way the legacy of the deeply ingrained culture of dependency: either the Latin American nation inquestion maintains thishigh level of "civilization" with some sort of European and/or North American support, or the authority or approval of theNorth is symbolically required to legitimize and seal theLatin American success. While the influence of Latin American writers is surely important in our three texts, that of Northern writers is at least as strong, particularly that of Northern writers of proto and early science fiction. Flammarion is mentioned by name in Nic-Nac, and the works of Kepler,

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Mercier, Poe, and Verne, among others, likely influenced our writers in terms of theuse of the fantastic voyage, of a specific future setting forUtopia, of travel through time and space via medium or spiritist, of scientific detail and didacticism, of extrapolation from the present, and of the combination of real and fictitious characters and events. Other themes that appear inmost or all of our texts reflect thewriters' visions of national progress: individualmerit to be valued more highly than one's inherited title or class or race; the involvement or integration of different races and immigrant groups into national life; the importance of education and literacy; the political as well as the economic and cultural benefits of new technologies of transportation and communication; and the necessity of a free press. But it is time to let each text speak for itself.

"Mexico en el ano 1970" [Mexico in the Year 1970, 1844] "Mexico 1970" was originally published inEl Liceo Mexicano [The Mexican Lyceum]. Although themagazine stopped publication after only two issues (in January and May of 1844), El Liceo Mexicano was part of a significant publishing phenomenon of the time, the literarymagazine. Advances in the technology of typography and economies of scale contributed to the new look, content, and popularity of the "revista literaria" in 1840sMexico. According to a study of publishing trends inMexico during this time period, this type of magazine generally "reproduced the latest in letters, the sciences, and the arts produced in Europe and the United States" and eventually works by national writers as well, and its contents were "miscellaneous, instructive, and entertaining," (Suarez de la Torre 584). In the introduction to their first issue, the editors of El Liceo Mexicano declared their raison d'etre to be nothing less ... than "to make themultitude well acquainted with useful discoveries, with progress in the sciences, and with the steps being taken on the path thatmust lead to the perfection of man's knowledge" ("Introduceion" 3). The two pages of "Mexico 1970" appeared amidst four-hundred-plus pages of other "perfecting" articles on topics ranging from railroads, the daguerreotype, aviation, and electricity to hygiene and education, toMexican history, literature, and figures of note to poetry, fashion plates, and musical scores. The editors of El Liceo stated their intentions to emphasize Mexican topics and include "very few translations" (4). Because they wanted the magazine to be accessible to all and "a source of varied and very useful instruction" to their compatriots, they promised that the articles on scientific ... progress would be "written in a colloquial style avoiding] the use of technical terms" (3). The ultimate proof that theygive of theworthiness of their enterprise, however, was the recognition of the value of this typeof publication by Europeans; the opening lines of the Introduction are: "The utility of publications such as this one is universally recognized today. It is sufficient to peruse the voluminous list of publications of this type that are being produced inEurope in order to be convinced of the degree of acceptance which theyhave merited" (3). As has been noted, Fosforos-Cerillos can be credibly linkedwith the publication mission of El Liceo Mexicano, as he writes a number of articles forboth issues which vary innature from the sociocultural to the scientific to the

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literary. In the opening paragraph of "Mexico 1970" itself,his protagonist don Prospero [Mr. Prosperous] criticizes themajority of literaryperiodicals from the past (nineteenth) century for lacking just those elements thatEl Liceo Mexicano prided itself for including, articles on scientific and historical themes. "Mexico 1970" was published during particularly violent times. Between 1833 and 1855 therewere thirty-sevenMexican presidents, and eleven of them were Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna of Alamo fame; this period inMexican history can be summed up as "constantly teeter[ing] between simple chaos and unmitigated anarchy" (Meyer et al. 312). The textof "Mexico 1970" does not mention the political intricacies of 1844 directly. It takes the form of a dialogue between don Prospero, a man of ninety, and his nephew, Ruperto. They touch on a variety of topics in their short conversation: the importance of specialization in field of study and work, the death of the Governor of the Californias (with no implications that "the Californias" would soon be lost to the United States), a twentieth-century elopement via balloon in a well-lit neighborhood, the punishment of a corrupt politician, and the theater scene in Mexico City with itsFrench acting troupes and Italian opera companies thatpop over from Europe several nights a week to perform. The common thread running through this hodgepodge of themes is thewriter's desire to reveal the progressive national future that has replaced the retrograde national past. Mexico has leftbehind the superficial "encyclopedic spirit" of the nineteenth century. Sophisticated and efficient transportationand communication networks make itpossible for the nation to hear of the death of a far-off governor and have governors of other states gather for his funeral on the same day. Advanced daguerreotype technology allows for life-sized images of the events to be viewed in other cities. Balloons?never mind trains or cars?are the principal means of private as well as public transportation. Corruption in theMexican political system is now extremely rare, and perpetrators are given the death penalty. National institutions provide a wide range of cultural and educational opportunities as well as social services to the citizenry. "Mexico 1970" is not a framed narrative per se. There is no actual journey through time to reach the year 1970 as there is inmany Utopias or futuristic fictions, and the dialogue formatmeans that there is no room for a traditional third-person narrator who might address comments to the contemporary nineteenth-century reader. And yet that "double temporal perspective" is clearly present: the text is, as theMexican critic Gabriel Trujillo Munoz points out, "more an x-ray of theMexico of 1844 than a premonitory fiction about the Mexico of 1970" ("El futuroen llamas" 13). The creation of a de facto narrative frame is carried out via the character of don Pr6spero and via metafictional means. Don Prospero's opening line lays thegroundwork for theconstant connection of past and present (or present and future) narrative threads throughout the story: "Tt is necessary to confess, dear nephew, that the advances of the twentiethcentury are gigantic in all areas'" (347). Born in 1880, don Prospero would have grown up in the nineteenth century and been an eyewitness to the reforms that have brought his nation out of its troubled past and into the

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LATIN AMERICAN SF DISCOVERS ITS ROOTS 439 mainstream of global progress. This potential great-grandchild toMexicans of Fosforos's generation is thus the ideal authority to contrast the UtopianMexican society of the twentieth centurywith the problems of the nineteenth and so to serve as mouthpiece for Fosforo's criticisms of his present and for his ideas about the correct path to a better national future. Don Prospero continually refers to the past during the conversation: to those inferior literaryperiodicals, to the bad old days when corrupt politicians were the norm, towhat the value of a coin collection would have been "a century ago" (348). His final pronouncement is something of a closing of the frame he opened with his first lines. Here he describes theMexico City of 1970 as seen through the eyes of a typical nineteenth-century Mexican leader, and he makes it clear that this Utopian future is not due to the effortsof such men:

"If one of our pseudo-great men from the past century were to come back to life and see inMexico City 22 theaters,43 libraries, 164 literaryinstitutes, 32 hospitals; in short, if he were to see 800,000 inhabitantsenjoying liberty, salubrity, and inalterable peace in the most beautiful city inAmerica, he would ask tobe returnedto his tomb immediatelyfor fear of findinghimself confronted on all sides by the curses of men." (348; emphasis in original)

The text of "Mexico 1970" also carries out temporal doubling on a metafictional level, in the epigraph and the footnote appended to the tale. The epigraph is attributed to J.J. Mora, one of the possibilities suggested for Fosforos's true identity.

How many times our great-grandchildren will cross themselves When they take the annals of this century Into their hands! They will say: "Our grandparents "Were discreet, cultured, theatrical: "In conversing and writing, they were accomplished men; "In self-praise, without equal; "But in the midst of so many perfections "They were great scoundrels." (347)

This sarcastic ditty is, then, a perfect gloss of the story itself, as itpokes fun at Mora's contemporaries by referring to their great-grandchildren's future poor opinion of them. It also foreshadows don Prospero's concluding praise of the accomplishments of 1970 thathave come about in spite of his predecessors. The othermetanarrative connection to 1844 is a single but lengthydidactic footnote that Fosforos cannot resist including. He adds the note to explain that his portrayal of Mexico City as being illuminated at night in 1970 is not so far fetched, as itwas extrapolated from experiments with flammable hydrogen bicarbonate being carried out inParis. Fosforos recounts thedetails and progress of the experiment, and he abandons his technologically advanced fictional future completely as he addresses his readers of 1844 directly. "It seems ridiculous to say," he begins, and "The project seems harebrained at first glance," he acknowledges?that is to say, ridiculous and harebrained to someone in 1844. Fosforos ends by assuring the unnamed French scientist that ifhe imitates the work ethic of Daguerre, his labors are sure to bear fruit.

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If Fosforos's primary purpose is to satirize theMexico of 1844, his intent does not negate the fact thathis vision of thenational future is fairly optimistic. Although Mexico lacked the infrastructureand thepolitical stabilityof Northern nations in his own time, still, a writer in Fosforos's position could envision the products of rapid advances in science and technology as motors powerful enough to drive Mexico's leap in development in the next century. It should be underlined at this point that, whoever Fosforos may have been, like many nineteenth-centuryNorthern writers of science-fictional texts,he was au courant on the science of his day. All of the technology that appears in this storywas extrapolated from the latest in nineteenth-century inventions from around the world: the daguerreotype process had just been perfected in 1839, the telegraph would only be put into actual use for the first time in the spring of 1844 in the US, and balloons were not used as steerable methods of transportationuntil the early twentiethcentury (see also the articles by "F.C." inElLiceo Mexicano on Electricity [30] and the construction and use of the thermometer [61]). It should also be mentioned at thispoint, however, thatdespite his portrayal ofMexico's tremendous progress in the text, there is a certain shortfall in the daring of Fosforos's vision. It is not unexpected that not all groups are represented as participating equally in theUtopian "liberty, salubrity, and inalterable peace" of Fosforos's future: no mention ismade of members of any but the governing class; the issue of race and racial minorities is not addressed; and the only woman in the story has to elope to escape a forced marriage with a cousin interested inher dowry. What is somewhat more surprising is thatFosforos has been unable to free himself from the concept of?and possibly belief in?European ascendancy. Although, with the episode of the funeral of the governor of theCalifornias, Fosforos shows that revolutions in transportation and communication have served to unite Mexico, he gives just as much importance to the fact that these technologies also now linkMexico more closely with Europe. If at first glance it seems that the futureMexico is on a par with Europe, even in this imagined Utopia Europeans are thepurveyors of culture and of science, as the only artists and scientistsmentioned in the text are French or Italian. Perhaps Fosforos believed that national scientific and artistic contributions would come once Mexico had caught up with theNorth in terms of access to theproducts of scientists and artists. Don Prospero does speak early on of his hopes that the next Mexican generation "will cause a brilliant revolution in the sciences and arts," now that specialization is the accepted method of study (347); but apparently Fosforo did not believe that 126 years would be enough time to bring this about.

Pdginas da historia do Brasil escripta no anno de 2000 [Pages from the History of Brazil Written in the Year 2000, 1868-72] Joaquim Felicio dos Santos was a member of a prominent family from the state of Minas Gerais. A lawyer by training, he also worked as an educator, a businessman, a politician, and a newspaperman. He wrote inmultiple genres, but he is best known for his historical textMemorias do Distrito Diamantino [Memoirs of theDiamantino District] and for the Indianist fiction Acayaca; he

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LATIN AMERICAN SF DISCOVERS ITS ROOTS 441 himself considered his greatest work to be his multivolume project rewriting the Brazilian civil legal code. Felicio dos Santos was writer, editor, and "the principal person responsible" forO Jequitinhonha [pronounced "Zhe-kee-chee NYO-nya"], a four-page weekly newspaper based in the city of Diamantina and serving the northern part of theprovince ofMinas Gerais (Teixeira Neves 21). Here he published Brasil 2000 in almost weekly installmentsbetween 1868 and 1872. An ardent Liberal-cum-Republican, Felicio dos Santos wrote Brasil 2000 in direct response to specific political events of the day. Itwas a biting satire against theBrazilian Emperor and his regime, a sort of fictional complement to or "glosa" ["gloss"] of the contents of thenewspaper's frontand editorial pages (Eulalio 104). Some historical background is necessary to understand the driving force behind the work of this earliest known writer of Brazilian science fiction. Brazil's independence process and the resultingpolitical situation thatcontinued throughout the nineteenth century are unique among Latin American nations. When Napoleon's forces invaded Portugal, King Joao VI and the Portuguese royal court fledwith sixteen thousand of their closest friends toRio de Janeiro, a move, as Skidmore points out, "unprecedented not only in the history of the Americas but in thewhole history of colonial exploration" (35). From 1815 to 1822, the state of Brazil enjoyed equal status to Portugal in a United Kingdom. In 1821 Dom Joao returned to Portugal, leaving his son, Pedro, as prince regent of Brazil; in 1822, with his father's blessing, Pedro declared Brazilian independence and was crowned Emperor Pedro I of Brazil. After his father's death in 1831, Pedro I returned to Portugal to assume the Portuguese throne, leaving his five-year-old son, the Brazilian-born Pedro II, to rule Brazil. The reign of Pedro II, referred to as theSegundo Reinado [Second Reign], lasted for most of the nineteenth century, and it is often compared to that of Queen Victoria for its length and stability. The violent rebellions against the colonizer and the internalupheaval thatpreceded independence and national consolidation in Hispanic America had virtually no counterpart in Brazil. Brazilian development during the Segundo Reinado looked good on paper: factories were being built at an increasing rate, railroad tracks and telegraph lines were expanding rapidly, the steamship had reduced what had been a two- to three month trip up the Amazon to a mere nine days. A look beyond the numbers, however, reveals that the economic growth benefited only a wealthy minority and independentBrazil was continuing the colonial pattern of dependency within the country's borders and in its relationship with Europe. Land ownership remained in the hands of an elite minority; the expanding railroads, instead of serving to unify the far-flungprovinces of the vast Brazilian empire, "generally ran between plantation and port. Thus, they helped to speed exports tomarket ... rather than to create an internal economic infrastructure"; and Brazil extended telegraph lines to Europe (1874) before sending lines to its nearest neighbors (Montevideo in 1879, Buenos Aires in 1883) or tomany of itsown provinces (Burns 159-61, 168-71). This process of quantitative growth without real qualitative development contributed to the phenomenon of unequal modernity thatpersists inBrazil today. The Segundo Reinado lasted until 1889,

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when Pedro, much weakened physically and politically, ceded power to junior military officers who rose up in a nearly bloodless coup. Felicio dos Santos had halted publication of O Jequitinhonha in order to attempt to change the Brazilian political situation from within when he was elected to a term in the legislature of the Empire of Brazil for 1864-66, but he left government in frustration after only a few months, as his attempts at political reformwere virtually ignored. By the late 1860s the first cracks in the national political situationwere already becoming visible. Brazil was embroiled in a costly war with Paraguay (1865-70) forwhich Dom Pedro II tookmuch of the blame at home. When in July of 1868 Pedro II invited the Conservative Party to form a government despite a Liberal majority in the Chamber of Deputies, Felicio dos Santos resumed publication of his newspaper with a vengeance. On August 23, 1868, the first installment of Brasil 2000 appeared in itspages. Despite the freedom enjoyed by the press at that time, the degree towhich Felicio dos Santos felt free to attack Brazil's political system and the figure of her monarch inBrasil 2000 seems surprising. The texthas, in fact, been called "the best critique of themonarchy in our country" (Magalhaes 252). Some of Felicio dos Santos's favorite anti-imperial and anti-status quo hobby horses were the alleged nonconstitutional intentions of the constitutional monarch; the institutionof the lifelong senate term; the lack of any real difference between the Conservative and Liberal political parties; corruption among legislators; the centralization of political power and the economic infrastructure inBrazil to the detriment of provinces such as his own; the war with Paraguay; and the prevailing custom in Brazil of determining a person's worth based on social race on class, economic means, royal favor, and/or rather than individual merit. The list is quite particular to theBrazilian milieu, yet has marked similarities to Fosforos's targets in "Mexico 1970." The mordancy of Felicio dos Santos's satire can be attributed to his belief that he was publishing in the relative "anonymity" of O Jequitinhonha and subsequently thatBrasil 2000 would never reach farther than the newspaper's regional mineiro audience. The work was "ephemeral" by design, which is why he never republished it either in other newspapers or in book form, as he did several of his other serialized works (Eulalio 103-104). By all accounts, however, the impassioned literary editorial did not go unnoticed at court, and it is likely thathis attacks on themonarchy in O Jequitinhonha, and particularly in Brasil 2000, were the deciding factor in Pedro II's rejection of Felicio dos Santos's projected revision of the legal code (Teixeira Neves 26; Eulalio 107-108). Brasil 2000 eventually sank into relative oblivion. A few historians and literarycritics have revealed knowledge of the text, but only Alexandre Eulalio has written about it in depth. The fragilityof themedium on which the textwas printedmeant thatnot even Eulalio had access to the complete work ("Paginas" 106n5); for the purposes of this study I have been able to read themajority of the text and Eulalio's summaries ofmost of the rest of it.13Although we do not have either the beginning or a true ending of the text of Brasil 2000? Eulalio tells us that the text peters out in late 1872, rather than ending definitively

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(103)?we do have something almost as good. On November 22, 1862 Felicio dos Santos published a short story inO Jequitinhonha entitled "A Historia do Brasil escrita pelo Dr. Jeremias no Ano de 2862" [A History of Brazil Written by Dr. Jeremias in the Year 2862], which I have examined in greater detail elsewhere (Haywood Ferreira 155-63). According to Eulalio and tomy own reading of the text, "Dr. Jeremias 2862" is the seed of what eventually became Brasil 2000 (106). Both "Dr. Jeremias 2862" and Brasil 2000 are futuristic Utopias, and the narrational premise of each involves a nineteenth-century re (pre-)edition of a history of Brazil brought back in time from the twenty-ninth or twenty-firstcentury (with notes, excisions, and commentary by sundry historians, narrators, translators, and historical and/or fictional authorities from the two time streams). Eulalio goes as far as to call Felicio dos Santos a "Julio Verne sertanejo" ["Jules Verne from theBrazilian sertdo region"] (103), but he does not analyze either of these texts as science fiction. Brasil 2000 was only definitively reclaimed for the genre by Braulio Tavares in the early 1990s, most visibly in the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (in the entry on "Latin America"). Eulalio describes the composition process of Brasil 2000 as follows:

Joaquim Felicio wrote the History of the Year 2000 without particular care, practically [withthe paper] on his knee, just at thedeadline forhanding material over to the typesetter. Without any very defined plan, the narrative constructs itself, bit by bit, and it varies infinitely according to the fantasy and the humor of thewriter of the serial. (103)

Despite the rather loosely knit structure of Brasil 2000 that resulted from such a writing process, the text can be divided into two clearly defined parts or, to use Eulalio's term, "phases" (105-106). Phase one runs fromAugust 23, 1868 throughDecember 5, 1869, and phase two from December 12, 1869 through late 1872. The second phase of the text is referred to farmore often by both historians and literarycritics because it ismore "action oriented" (Eulalio 105), because itcontains the actual time-travel journey to the year 2000, because it is the "Utopian" half of the tale, and/or because it contains Felicio dos or Santos's?often accurate "prophetic"?predictions about the Brazil of the future (Magalhaes 252). The installmentsof the firstphase of Brasil 2000 do not devote a great deal of space to life in the future,but theydo not have to in order to be considered sf since they are purportedly from the future. These time traveling pages do not proclaim the progress and the scientific advances that were being or would be made in coming years somuch as theydescribe the anti scientific forces thatwere working against progress in Brazil in the nineteenth century.We are not shown thewonders of the republic but rather the evils of empire holding Republican forces in check. Phase one of Brasil 2000 is an unofficial, nonestablishment version of the events of 1868-69 in Brazil, a version written from the periphery of national power?though not, it should be remembered, from a position of complete powerlessness?and revelatory of thedarker side of the center. W^hat Felicio dos Santos's science-fictional history of Brazil's present is able to do (that his historical textMemorias do Distrito Diamantino cannot) is to claim for itself the

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 444 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) authority of theultimate victors, to say that thiswill be the official history, this will be how today's people and events are remembered in the future.Despite the literary realism of phase one of Brasil 2000, with its heavy emphasis on dialogues and diatribes, there is also a great sense of metanarrative play. As Alkon has observed, "Where fantasy is avoided, various metafictional devices often play an equivalent role in moving futuristic fiction away from unselfconscious realism" (Origins 193). Figures such as a nineteenth-century editor and a translatorof the history book from 2000 leave clear and deliberate editorial scissormarks and opinions scattered throughout the text. The nineteenth-century editor writes in the body of the text: "Let us skip several pages dealing with theSaraiva Mission, the retaliatory actions, theprotest of the neutral nations etc., etc. Then the historian continues: ..." (Brasil 2000 114). The translator puts the following comment in a footnote: "So as not to fatigue the reader, we will suppress a long and fastidious dissertation on diplomacy (Translator's Note)" (Brasil 2000 May 16, 1869). Interjections such as these provide constant connection with the future-timeperspective of the history text from the year 2000 by reminding readers that this is not simply a nineteenth century history book that is being narrated in an omniscient style, but rather a mediated, retrospective view of nineteenth-century history, whose writer and mediators thereforeknow which facts and informationwill be most pertinent in the long run and which opinions and attitudes will turn out to have been the correct ones. Yet Felicio dos Santos is so blatant about his narrative manipulation inBrasil 2000 that the reader never forgets that this is a projected retrospective history written with an overt nineteenth-century agenda. Felicio dos Santos's satire?and his sense of humor?extends to the very notion of the possibility of an unmediated, ultimate, true history and to his own endeavor to persuade the reader that this text is just such a work. Phase one of Brasil 2000, then, is a dystopia inwhich Felicio dos Santos paints the evils of Brazil's political system, of the Paraguayan War, and of the usurpers in thenew Conservative Cabinet. He focuses on the figure of Pedro II as thepersonification of corrupt, nonprogressive forces that arrogate all power to the central government. To support his criticism, he linksDom Pedro with all thatbelongs to the outmoded past in a number of ways, both metanarrative and plot-centered. The writer firstmakes itknown that themonarchical system of government inBrazil will have fallen before the year 2000, and he has theEmperor himself betray his "true" motivations and character. This is done both in the outer frameworks of the history-2000 (in a footnote, one Dr. Sckwthrencoff cites a tradition that "was preserved until the fall of theBrazilian monarchy" [Dec. 5, 1869]), and within the text itself (at one point thefictionalized monarch himself recognizes that the Brazilian people will inevitably unite against him: "'Wretches, who one day will decide to rise up and contest the divine prerogatives of royalty!'" [Feb. 28, 1869]). It is never made clear how the historian-2000 gained the fly-on-the-wall perspective of the latter example; at other points in the narrative Felicio dos Santos prefers to place this type of insider's view within a citation of a text

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LATIN AMERICAN SF DISCOVERS ITS ROOTS 445 written by someone else. Most?not all?of thewriters of these intercalated texts are real, and they come from both the past and the future time streams; most?not all?of the texts are completely fictional or fictionalized works with real titles. For several weeks, for example, Felicio dos Santos "cites" from a play, Eleigoes do Ceard [The Ceara Elections], supposedly written by thewell known writer and newly minted Conservative Jose de Alencar; in scene thirty seven of thisone-act play, Pedro II admits his tendency toward the accumulation of power to one of his ministers:

"In monarchies the nation is a great head on a rickety body, all the vitality of the extremities should flow to a single point, the capital.... Paris is France; London, England; Saint Petersburg, Russia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Washington goes unnoticed on the world map: it is the capital of a savage, degenerate people, the scourge of nations, who disdain the supreme happiness of government by a crowned brow!" (Dec. 5, 1869)

The passage is of further interestfor its association of Dom Pedro with Europe (the Old World) rather than the United States (the New World); Pedro II is repeatedly shown seeking approval and recognition from Europe and speaking against thedecentralization of power in theUS, a political model that is thebane of his existence.14 This inversion of Felicio dos Santos's own ideas is another example of how he uses the king's view of theworld as a foil for his own. Felicio dos Santos also relegates Pedro II and his monarchy to the past by portraying Dom Pedro as antiscientific and therefore antiprogress, unable to function in themodern world. Felicio dos Santos makes this accusation in spite of the fact that Pedro II was a patron of the sciences and something of an amateur scientist in his own right. In Brasil 2000 Pedro II is represented as a presumptuous dabbler who uses science as an instrumentof imperial control, a vain man who believes thata scientific veneer will grant him status and respect from the European monarchs he longs to impress. One of many examples of the king's complete ignorance of all things scientific is given in a (fictional) passage cited from a (fictional) scientific textby a (real) writer. Here Dom Pedro favors a new technique he has read about in a pamphlet claiming it is possible to produce detonators from roasted coffee beans (Feb. 21, 1869). Thus, instead of bringing Brazil to the higher level of technological sophistication required to produce detonators from the usual fulminate of mercury, the king invests resources national in low-tech quackery. Phase two of Brasil 2000 functions as an antidote to phase one; it is as much an anti-dystopia as a Utopia. Here Felicio dos Santos draws an even tighter connection between the two temporal threads of his narrative. In addition to bringing a textback in time, he sends a person traveling into the future. But he does not take themore usual course of choosing someone sympathetic tohis own vision; rather than sending a person to admire, learn about, and bring ideas back fromhis ideal future, Felicio dos Santos sends his fictionalized Pedro II.15This rather abrupt turnof events begins in the episode of December 12, 1869, which opens with thesewords from the nineteenth-centuryeditor: "We owe the reader an explanation of our title?Pages from theHistory of Brazil Written in the Year 2000. How, in the year of our Lord 1869, can you publish fragments of a

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 446 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) history book thatwill not be written for another 131 years?" The editor insists that a text that travels through time should not seem absurd in a world of instantaneous communication through space between America and Europe. He thenmakes a connection thatwould resonate with Brazilian readers in the 1870s: the textof Brasil 2000 has been brought from the futureby a medium. Spiritism had been brought to Brazil via France in the early 1850s, and by the 1870s it was enjoying wide popularity among theBrazilian elite (see Machado 68, 92). It is important thatFelicio dos Santos's choice of spiritism as a method of time travel be viewed in this context and in the context of typical science-fictional methods of travel through time and space prior toWells's Time Machine (see, for example, Nicolson and the entries on "Time Travel" by Edwards and Stableford and "Sleeper Awakes" by Clute in theClute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). Felicio dos Santos was clearly not a believer in spiritism himself, and his inclusion of spiritism in the text should not be construed as a third-world, low-tech alternative to travel via technological means nor as evidence for the common and only partially correct characterization of Latin American sf as tending toward the "soft" sciences and the fantastic. In a somewhat confused plot twist, the editor's promised explanation of how he obtained this history-2000 morphs into an account of Pedro II's trip to the future. The monarch's journey through time in Brasil 2000 is immediately preceded by a (meta)literary experience:

It was 14 minutes and 23 seconds after 11 o'clock at night. Profound silence reigned in the palace of St. Christopher, everyone slept; only H.R.M. the emperor remained awake. Reclining near a table, H.R.M. was attentively ... devouring the marvelous adventures of Don Quijote of laMancha the reading of which is permitted only to great monarchs. "Oh! If only a prince were allowed to read about the history of his reign in the future!" His majesty broke off. Through the shadows of his thoughts he discerned the man pallid figure of a man. It was not an illusion. The advanced, bowed, and kissed the imperial hand. "Who are you? Where did you come from? What do you want?" the emperor asked.

"Dr. Tsherepanoff, your majesty's most humble servant. A native of Russia, I have just come from France; I have traveled 9,645 leagues today." "A madman!." "No, Sir, I am not a madman. I am a medium...." (Dec. 12, 1869)

After Dr. Tsherepanoff gives furtherevidence of his credentials as medium-to the-monarchs, he puts the emperor into a hypnotic sleep. Dom Pedro awakens on January 1,2000. Instead of discovering thegreatness of his legacy, he finds that a Republican government has decentralized Brazil and made ita federation. In the "confederation of theUnited-States of Brazil," transportation by "aerostatic packet" and communication via "electrical telegraphy" allow for power and influence to be shared equally among all Brazilian cities, towns and villages, uniting the entire country rather than concentrating power in the capital (Dec. 12, 19, and 26, 1869). In the text of this author from the provinces, Rio is reduced to a virtual ruin, and a statue of

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Pedro I has been replaced with one of Tiradentes, a republican hero. Pedro II learns thathe was deposed at some point, and thathis body lies in a modest tomb in Italy, where most of his descendants are now hard-working farmers.When Pedro II happens tomeet a Brazilian descendant, theman knows nothing of the former glories of his line and barely remembers thatBrazil had ever been an empire. Despite a few errors and exaggerations, Felicio dos Santos was surprisingly successful in a number of his predictions for the year 2000. Brazil would indeed become a republic in his own lifetime. He also predicted the relocation of the national capital to the geographic center, an end to slavery inBrazil (1888), the population of Brazil in 2000 (within 20 million people), and the creation of a United Nations. But, as Fredric Jameson has noted, "themost characteristic SF does not seriously attempt to imagine the 'real' future of our social system. Rather, its multiple mock futures serve the quite different function of transforming our own present into the determinate past of something yet to come" (152). Felicio dos Santos's device of a history of the nineteenth century written in theyear 2000 is a literalization of this transformativeprocess. He was far less invested in representing an idyllic future inhis text than inusing that text to plant seeds of change in his own time.With another of his predictions, for example, he sought to prepare his countrymen for a change he believed to be inevitable. Although he was unable to predict thepresidency of Lula, Felicio dos Santos did imagine a president ofmixed Indian and African ancestry, which was forhis time and place an extremely unlikely possibility. Anticipating his readers' rejection of the idea of such a president, he has his fictional nineteenth-century editor argue his case:

Peace, friend reader; our poor imagination does not come into this at all; it is reality.... Other times, other customs. Peoples are like individuals: their ideas, their principles, their tastes, their character change with the eras. The nineteenth century in which we live is not the same as the twenty-first. We say with Voltaire, "what things, what marvels our children will see!" In the twenty-first are century color and birth purely accidental qualities; people consider things a from rational point of view, they heed only the personal qualities of the individual. (Brasil 2000 139-40)

Felicio dos Santos uses his chosen science-fictional narrative technique to particular advantage here: this is not supposition or invention, it is reality; this isnot literary imagination (claims the author's literary invention, thenineteenth century editor), but historical fact. This is one of thebeauties of the time-travel narrative; as McLemee has pointed out in his analysis of Bellamy's Looking Backward, the futuremay be radically different from the time traveler's present, but "There is also the evidence of [the time traveler's] senses: you can't argue with success" (23). In comparison with Fosforos's vision of a twentieth-centuryMexico, Felicio dos Santos projects a Brazil that is far more secure in its sense of national identityand far less dependent on the North. Once the Brazilian republic has recovered from the backward conditions Felicio dos Santos blames on the monarchy, it finds itself "rivaling the cultured nations of old Europe" (Brasil

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2000137). Brazil and other nations of thenineteenth-century periphery are now producers of science and of culture: themechanism for steering dirigibles has been discovered by an African engineer fromTimbuktu (Dec. 26, 1869); Pedro II reads a scientific treatiseby Dr. Japoti, a celebrated chemist from theMacune Indian tribe (139); more newspapers in African languages than European languages are available in the futureBrazilian capital; and European students come to study at superior Brazilian universities. But ifBrazil is the futurewhile Europe is now the past, still Felicio dos Santos cannot quite rid himself of the last vestiges of themindset of dependency. In what is perhaps an unconscious slip intonineteenth-century rhetoric, a transportation engineer in the year 2000 explains the benefits of connecting the interiorof Brazil with the coast with the phrase "'Duty-free passage down the riverwas promoted, opening the republic to the sea, to foreign commerce, to light and civilization'" (143). Felicio dos Santos can see Brazil helping European and other central nations financially, politically, and even educationally, but he still refers to the "light and civilization" as coming fromwithout rather thanfrom within. Felicio dos Santos's decision to transforma futurehistory into a time-travel narrative reflects his increasing optimism about the futureof Brazil. He himself went from being a Liberal to a full-fledged Republican during his years writing for O Jequitinhonha, while Pedro II went from an evenhanded user of his moderating power to a conservatively biased monarch at the head of a long and costly armed conflict. Still, the author of Brasil 2000 had to live throughnearly twentymore years of monarchy, of waiting for his country to take what he firmly believed was the key first step along the way to realizing its true potential. Felicio dos Santos was a nation-builder, but as he began to run out of time to build as he saw fit, he created his own time inwhich to do so:

A patriot in a nation that was taking its first steps, surrounded by difficulties of every order, having its aspirations to become a great power curbed by the naturally inferior situation that we [Brazil] occupied in international politics, he turned to the blank page of the futurewhere he would draft his dreams of greatness. In this way he sublimated his disenchantment and his dissatisfaction with contemporary reality at the same time as he spiritedly served his political faction. (Eulalio 107)16

Amid his musings on the wonders of his Utopian future, Felicio dos Santos writes rather wistfully, "Oh! if only some fairy,medium, or spiritist could prolong our lives until then!" (140). Before Joaquim Felicio dos Santos died in 1895, he participated in the industrialization of Brazil; he saw slavery completely abolished (1888) and Pedro II and the Braganca monarchy fall (1889); and he was elected to a term in theRepublican senate (1890).

Viaje maravilloso del Senor Nic-Nac en el que se refieren las prodijiosas aventuras de este senor y se dan d conocer las instituciones, costumbres y preocupaciones de un mundo desconocido: Fantasia espiritista [The Marvelous Journey ofMr. Nic-Nac inWhich Are Recounted the Prodigious Adventures of This Gentleman and Are Made Known the Institutions,

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Customs and Preoccupations of an Unknown World: A Spiritist Fantasy, 1875-76] Our third text, Nic-Nac, was published by Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg in weekly installments in the "Folletin" [Serials] section of the Buenos Aires newspaper El Nacional between November 29, 1875 and March 13, 1876. At this time, Argentina was just emerging from a period of national unrest. The domination of national politics by thecaudillos of themid-nineteenth centuryhad been broken, and the aftershocks of the rebellion of Bartolome Mitre, the losing presidential candidate in the elections of 1874, were almost over. National institutionswere being founded leftand right, and thewatershed year of 1880, commonly cited as thepoint atwhich Argentina achieved national consolidation, was almost in sight. As discussed above, thiswas a timeof great optimism about Argentina's potential fordevelopment. The hegemony of scientificdiscourse was at its height, and itwas now accompanied by a pragmatic drive to improve scientific education, as science was perceived as one of the keys to national progress. Argentina's greatest educational reformerwas the second president of the republic, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-88; presidency 1868-74). As part of his efforts, Sarmiento brought foreign scientists toArgentina to advance scientific knowledge of/in the country. The most importantof these scientists was Carlos German Conrado [Karl Hermann Konrad] Burmeister (1807-92), but despite his contributions to Argentine science, Burmeister proved a disappointment on a number of levels. He did not share Sarmiento's belief in Darwinism. His works on Argentina itself, such as his Description Physique de laRepublique Argentine [Physical Description of theArgentine Republic], were largely published and distributed inEurope inFrench or German. Further, in the words of Holmberg's son and biographer, "Dedicated to his scientific work, [Burmeister] did not attract a single young person, he trainedno disciples" (Luis Holmberg 138-39). It fell to the Argentine Generation of 1880 to improve national scientific literacy and to build the foundation of an Argentine scientific establishment. Holmberg was a prominentmember of theGeneration of 1880, although he was also well known in theModernist circles of the subsequent generation. This "shining star of early Argentine natural science" was a licensed medical doctor, an Argentine Linnaeus who worked to catalogue thenational flora and fauna, an educator who taught inmost branches of the sciences from anatomy to zoology, and the director of the national zoo (Rodriguez 29). He was also a poet, a prolific writer of fiction short and long, and the person often credited with introducing three genres inArgentina and/or Latin America: the fantastic tale, detective fiction, and science fiction.17While he was instrumental in importing scientific and literary ideas and trends from theNorth throughhis professional work and his translations of documents from English, French, and German, he was also a key figure in themovement for scientific and literaryautonomy as a founder of the first scientific periodical written and published inArgentina by Argentines (El Naturalista Argentino TheI Argentine Naturalist]), as a contributor to a project on national variants of the Spanish language (the Diccionario del lenguaje argentino [Dictionary of theArgentine Language]), and

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 450 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) as the author of Lin-Calel, an epic poem in the indigenista [Indianist] tradition. Holmberg was not merely interested in introducing the rest of the world to Argentina, but in introducingArgentina to itself.Perhaps Holmberg's "caracter de frontera" ["transitional/border character"] (Ludmer 173), his location in "between"?between generations, between intellectual disciplines, between national traditions?was what made him such an important national literary innovator and popularizer of science. For Holmberg and his generation, national development was inextricably linked to the creation of a scientifically informedpopulation. As he wrote in the Advertencia [Note to theReader] of the first issue of El Naturalista Argentino in 1878, "The natural sciences, the sciences of observation, should be considered the foundation of modern progress" (qtd. in Pages Larraya 18). Holmberg saw literature and science as natural partners in this process. "Tn order to awaken a love forNatural History in theArgentine public,'" he said in 1876, "'it is indispensable that fairly literary language be used to present the material... that the useful always be combined with the pleasant'" (qtd. inLuis Holmberg 76). It is true to course, then, thatwhen Holmberg finally became the one to present Darwin's theories to the general Argentine reading public, he chose to do so in a work of fiction, Dos partidos en lucha [Two Factions Struggle for the Survival of the Fittest]. In addition to defending Darwinism in the text of Dos partidos, we also find Holmberg recognizing a number of Northern writers formaking science more accessible and more palatable to his compatriots. He cites scientists such as Flammarion and Figuier for their contributions toward putting science "within reach of all levels of intelligence" (70). He also cites writers of adventure and science-fictional tales such as Mayne Reid and Verne, particularly the latter, for having "sheathed themysteries of science with a vaporous and attractivemantle" (70). The influence of all of these writers is also clear in Nic-Nac, which Holmberg wrote during the same time period as Dos partidos. In the tale, Nic Nac, a doctor, and a German medium called Friedrich Seele travel together to Mars. Not unlike theEuropeans arriving in theNew World, some of Nic-Nac's first actions on Mars are to name geographic features after places they resemble on Earth and toworry that the inhabitantsmight be cannibals. Nic-Nac and the doctor soon become acquainted with the landscape, beings, customs, and institutionsof the red planet. Before Seele, who turns out not to be German at all, but a Martian who had been visiting Earth,18 leaves the two to their own devices, he endows each with a phosphorescent aura thatwill function as a protective shield against any aggression by the natives as well as overcome any language barriers, a sort of nineteenth-centuryversion of theuniversal translator in Star Trek or thebabblefish inThe Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy. A series of adventures follow, including an interspecies love affair between the doctor and a Martian girl; Nic-Nac's visit with the local Martian leaders; and flightvia some unnamed means to the capital city. At many points in the tale theMartians appear to be a more advanced, Utopian civilization; at others they seem to possess flaws with marked similarities to those of their terrestrial counterparts. The text ends with Nic-Nac's return to Earth, where his efforts to share the

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lessons of his journey result in his being treated like a modern version of the proverbial prophet in his own country: he is confined to an insane asylum. The tale of Nic-Nac's fantastic journey has two distinct narrative frames. The outermost frame of the tale takes place inBuenos Aires on November 19, 1875, a week before Holmberg's Nic-Nac began to appear inEl Nacional. In this framewe hear the voices of the inhabitantsof Buenos Aires reacting to the news thatNic-Nac claims to have returned from a trip toMars, and we read the latest news bulletins on thematter. Some citizens believe Nic-Nac, calling him "the daring Livingstone of outer space" (3); others refer tohis supposed journey as "his harebrained and fantastic excursion" (4). The authorities are in agreement with the lattergroup,19 and Nic-Nac is declared mad. Over the next three days Nic-Nac writes the tale of his adventures in order to defend their veracity and his own sanity; his book, Viaje maravilloso del Sr. Nic-Nac al planeta Marte [The Marvelous Journey of Mr. Nic-Nac to the Planet Mars], is published on November 22. As this frame closes, the third-personnarrator turns to address the reader directly, employing language similar to that which Holmberg had used to laud Verne's talents as a popularizer of complex scientific ideas. "In our times," the narrator says, "serious ideas do not fulfill their destiny except when they are wrapped in themantle of fantasy.... let us then read Mr. Nic-Nac's book; itmay resolve some importantmatter" (7). The narrator's injunction is followed by the textof Nic-Nac's account, which is a framed narrative in its own right. The frame to Nic-Nac's tale is his own explanation of themechanism he used for thefirst known space tripfrom Earth. Like Felicio dos Santos's Pedro II, Nic-Nac achieves his displacement, or "transplanetation" (122), with the help of a foreign medium. Also, as with Brasil 2000, thismethod of transportation inNic-Nac should not be read as an avoidance of technology in Latin American sf. Rocketships were not yet de rigueur for space travel in early science fiction, and Holmberg undoubtedly modeled Nic-Nac's voyage after the ideas of the French scientist, popularizer of science, and spiritistCamille Flammarion (1842-1925). Flammarion's 1872 story Lumen was a dramatization of ideas he had first expounded in several nonfictional books (Stableford, "Introduction" xiv). In the tale, Lumen is the spiritof a recently deceased Frenchman who describes the interplanetary travels of his spirit to his former student, Quaerens. What humans call death is, according toLumen, but the final separation of the body and the soul, which he sees as a continuation of the evolutionary process: "The earthly animal kingdom has followed, from itsorigin, thiscontinuous and progressive march towards the perfection of its typical forms ofmammalia, freeing itselfmore and more, from the grossness of itsmaterial" (97). Under the guidance of themedium, Seele, Nic-Nac decides to induce the separation of his "spirit-image" fromhis material body by depriving himself of "all thatmight debilitate the spiritby strengthening thematerial being," that is to say, by starving himself (Nic-Nac 18). His declared purpose is to gain a new perspective on the great questions of this life ... and the next: "'It is necessary to liberate the spirit from theweight of the material being and to elevate it substantially to those regions thatmay perhaps serve to resolve themost difficult issues of the Universe'" (10). But while

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Flammarion uses spiritism togive his titlecharacter greater authority,Holmberg uses it both to claim greater authority forNic-Nac and simultaneously to call Nic-Nac's authority into question. Lumen speaks to his student from a higher plane of existence, but Holmberg brings Nic-Nac back to Earth to tell his tale from our terrestrial,material plane, where Nic-Nac faces charges thathis tale is the product of hallucination or of a deranged mind.20 The invitation by the narrator to look below the surface of Nic-Nac's fantastic journey for a more serious subtext also has a literaryecho inNic-Nac's choice of readingmaterial during his initialpreparation forhis trip. Immediately aftermaking the decision to starve the body to feed the soul, he sits down with the same book Felicio dos Santos's Dom Pedro was reading prior to his displacement: "As proof of my determination," Nic-Nac tells the reader, "I spent the rest of the day reading the description of thewedding of Camacho"; the chapter ends (18). Immediately after thewedding of Camacho in the second volume of Don Quijote comes the famous episode of theCave of Montesinos. Upon being lowered into the cave, don Quijote says, "T was, all of a sudden, overpowered by a most profound sleep'" (Cervantes 485). Don Quijote goes on to describe awakening in frontof Montesinos's castle and themany marvelous things he witnessed in the company of Montesinos over the next three days, although Sancho Panza informshim he was gone only an hour and thata number of the events his master has described could not have happened. When Sancho doubts don Quijote's sanity aloud, the good knight rejoins: "'As thou art not experienced in the events of thisworld, every thing that is uncommon, to thee seems impossible'" (491). In addition to the comedic value of a starvingman reading about a feast and to a literary interest (also seen in Brasil 2000) in Cervantes's use of narrative frames, Holmberg includes this reference to the Quijote as a second injunction to the reader to look beyond Nic-Nac's apparent insanity to the sense that lies beneath. Holmberg directs our attention fromMars to Earth, from fictional situations to real ones, from Utopia to "topia." Holmberg's Mars fluctuates between a direct analogy for Earth and a representation of a more advanced, Utopian society thatTerrans would do well to emulate. Chapter seven ofNic-Nac, thefirst chapter that takes place onMars, ends with a direct statement that each continent of Mars has an equivalent on Earth (31). Chapter eight then opens with a declaration ofMartian superiority: "Their advances, superior to those of theEarth, have been conquered bymeans of numerous sacrifices that today place them at the first level among planetary civilizations" (31-32). Nic-Nac later again implies thatMartian society is the more advanced when he uses the nebular hypothesis (as H.G. Wells also did over twentyyears later inWar of theWorlds) to state thatbecause Mars is an older planet than theEarth, Martian life evolved sooner (61). On thenext page, however, he brings theMartians back to the level of Terrans, saying that Martians have evolved at a slower pace (62). The Utopian Mars continues to reappear throughout the narrative. There is no illness on Mars; love on the red planet is "more elevated, more sublime" than on Earth (120); Martians themselves are more generous (126). Indeed, at one point Nic-Nac laments the ... need ever to return tohis inferiorhome planet: "Ah! What a shame! to arrive

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at the pedestal of glory and of hopes on the rosiest of the planets, and to return to Earth to contemplate the same storms, the same valleys, the same faces.... What a shame! To rise so high only to sink so low!" (84). When Nic-Nac arrives at the twinnedMartian cities of Theosophopolis (city of God and of thewise) (48), his visit to the Sophopolis section seems to confirm the Utopian characteristics of the planet's inhabitants. Sophopolis is the embodiment of Frye's characterization of Utopias as "elite societies inwhich a small group is entrusted with essential responsibilities, and this elite is usually some analogy of a priesthood.... The Utopias of science fiction are generally controlled by scientists, who of course are another form of priestly elite" (Frye 35). In Sophopolis theAcademy of Sciences functions as the seat of government. It is also a substitute for a religious institution;weddings are held there rather than at a church because, Nic-Nac tells his readers, theAcademy is "a more worthy temple, a more sacred building" (128). At the same time as he is elevating the sciences, however, Holmberg is turninga critical eye on scientists. He portrays the scientists inNic-Nac as myopically focusing on their special fields of interest and as tending toward interdisciplinary squabbling. Upon witnessing an astronomer and a zoologist bickering, Nic-Nac exclaims, "'Poor ... wise men! They are the same everywhere; always ill-humored, and not infrequently irrelevant!'" (82). Eduardo Ortiz has persuasively compared the Sophopolitan scientists inNic-Nac with Burmeister and the younger generation ofGerman scientists thatSarmiento had brought toArgentina, whom Ortiz terms the "Cordoba Six." IfHolmberg was indeed a "keen supporter of theGerman scientists" in their disagreements with Burmeister (Ortiz 60),21 he was also critical of them for staying inside their ivory towers and failing to spread scientificknowledge widely throughout theirhost country.22Holmberg was more overt elsewhere in his criticism of Argentina's scientific dependency on the North and in his advocacy of his country becoming a producer of science.23 In Nic-Nac he limits his commentary on the matter to the above-mentioned rather negative characterization of scientists and to the fact that, in the narrative, all scientists?canonical and occult, fictional and actual, identifiedand implied?are associated with the North: Seele, Gould, Flammarion, Burmeister, and the "Cordoba Six." But ifNic-Nac describes the of thewise," as " Sophopolis, semi-utopian "city a place inwhich the light is of a white or rosy cast, and a pleasant yet at the same time rigorousmajesty seems tohave traced the lines of thebuildings" (49), he does not characterize Theopolis, "the city of God," as such a model place:

The doors of the houses almost never open; a profound silence reigns during the day, interrupted only by the creaking, or rather the lamentations of some ... instruments that the inhabitants of Earth would call bells and by the sacred choirs that no one understands, because if they were to be understood they would lose their eminently mystical character. (48)

To theArgentine reader of Holmberg's time as well as to the alert reader today, Theosophopolis clearly represents the Argentine city of Cordoba, famous for being the seat of the Jesuits inArgentina and for theAcademy of Sciences of Cordoba, founded in 1874. In his personal life Holmberg was a skeptic, but

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 454 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) publicly he attacked religious hypocrisy and intolerance rather than religion itself.24 InNic-Nac he is not interested in placing science above religion, but rather inmutual respect between the two, a respect he saw as one-sided in Argentina at that time: "The Sophopolitans viewed the inhabitants of Theopolis as their equals, but the latter, in their heart of hearts, saw an inferior in each Sophopolitan" (75). Holmberg's criticisms of religion inNic-Nac are limited to the ostentatious, opaque, intolerant brand of Christianity practiced by the Theopolitans; unlike otherMartian Christians, Seele explains toNic-Nac, "the characteristic feature of their life is the exaltation of an abominable quality: hypocrisy; and this quality, converted by them into dogma, has brought more evils toMars than all of theMartial/Martian wars and abuses" (73). As for his own beliefs, Nic-Nac sums them up with thewords, "T am a Christian, but in my own way'" (97). From Theosophopolis, Nic-Nac and Seele cross an unpopulated plain that bears a strong resemblance to theArgentine pampa in order to reach the capital city of the country of Aureliana (argentum becomes aurum) on the coast. They find the unnamed capital city,much like theBuenos Aires of the time, divided by the factional squabbling that is, Seele tells Nic-Nac, "'so common in countries thathave not yet consolidated their internalorganization'" (145). Nic Nac claims to have themost impartial view of the situation due to his outsider's perspective; the critical distance of "'an extranatural being likemyself, yes, I, ... Nic-Nac who is ruled by the single desire to learn and to judge'" (165). Nic Nac tries to convince the twomajor factions to value peace and national unity son as a route to progress, saying, "'The progress of nations is the favorite of Peace'" (146). He tries tomake the factions realize that they are not two groups (on Mars they are given names other than "Nationalists" and "Autonomists") but one (never quite called "Argentines"). Although this situation is not resolved in the narrative, there is a sense of optimism at the end of the episode. As Nic Nac and Seele leave the capital to return to Theosophopolis, Seele promises positive changes to come: "'Later, when all is calm, we'll return, and you will see such a metamorphosis!'" (173). Once he has read Nic-Nac's account, thenarrator, who now refers tohimself as the "Publisher," declares thathe is disillusioned and concludes thatNic-Nac suffers from "Planetary Mania" (186). The Publisher does, however, explicitly and implicitly rescue some of Holmberg's "serious ideas" from underneath the "mantle of fantasy" of Nic-Nac's Martian odyssey in this closing frame of the text. Rather tongue-in-cheek, the Publisher rejects the veracity of Nic-Nac's means of transportation, but he insists thatNic-Nac is to be believed on the matter of the existence of life on other planets. Further, the Publisher cites the testimony of "brilliant spirits like that of Flammarion" to support Nic-Nac's story, and he declares inhis own right: "The plurality of inhabitedworlds is not a fantasy born of a fevered brain, it is a necessity, a conquest of the human spirit, an homage to thegreatness of theUniverse" (184-85). The Publisher also gives indications of seeing the Argentines reflected in the Aurelians and understanding Nic-Nac/Holmberg's criticisms of them. But why, thePublisher asks, must Nic-Nac insist upon presenting his story using "that indefinable

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LATIN AMERICAN SF DISCOVERS ITS ROOTS 455 vagueness of the concepts, those luminous forms, those indecisive glows" (185 86)? The same could be asked with regard to Holmberg's choice of using a science-fictional "mantle of fantasy" to speak to his countrymen. The Publisher's speculations provide answers to both questions, as he admits that "All of those elements that constitute the whole tale could not, perhaps, have been expressed in any other way" (186).

A Global Genre in the Periphery We owe the reader an explanation of our title?"The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers ItsRoots." How, in 2007, can one publish an article thatappears to claim thata few isolated texts thatwere all but lost for around 131 years constitute a wave?25 In Latin American science fiction, as in Northern science fiction, it is common practice to talk of "waves," "golden ages," and "booms" when discussing the trajectory of the genre, although these terms are usually applied to timeperiods such as the late 1950s or the turnof the millennium.26 With the reminder that in Latin America "the outside is also always inside" (Gonzalez Echevarria 41), our texts of early Latin American sf can be located within the leading edge of what Suvin has termed the Euro Mediterranean sf tradition's "fin-de-siecle cluster (ca. 1870-1910)" (87). Of course, we must admit that, with the possible exception of the Argentina/River Plate region, our textswere not foundation stones for national sf traditions in their respective countries.27 Eighteenth and nineteenth-century works of Latin American sf had little ifany influence on theLatin American sf writers of subsequent generations because theseworks had virtually disappeared for several reasons: the condemnation of such works by the Inquisition, their limiteddistribution inperiodicals and/or in small print runs ofmonographs, and the extremely local nature of the texts.Lately, however, these retrolabeled early works of Latin American sf seem to be coming into their own. They are now becoming valued as reflections of Latin American attitudes toward science, national identity,fiction, and other sociocultural issues of their times. And they are, at long last, becoming appreciated as evidence of the roots of Latin American participation in the sf genre. The latest chronology of Latin American science fiction by Molina-Gavilan et al.?published in this issue of SFS? lists thirty-fourworks from seven different countries published before 1900. I am not claiming that this clustering of texts constitutes a wave of Latin American science fiction in and of itself; but I am suggesting that these works are evidence of Latin American participation in the global wave of science fiction in the nineteenth century. Bell and Molina Gavilan are right to characterize our authors as having "no particular commitment to the genre," and they are equally right to say that there is "no cohesive science fiction tradition" in Latin America in the nineteenth century ("Introduction" 4). Fosforos, Felicio dos Santos, and Holmberg wrote inmany genres, literaryand otherwise, and theydid not identifythemselves primarily as writers in the science-fictional vein. They were, however, all at least cognizant of or atmost very engaged with theworks and mores of the sf tradition, as we have seen. The writers of these thirty-four nineteenth-century texts may not have

This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 456 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) been aware of each other or of the fact that together theywere establishing a pattern of Latin American participation in the science fiction genre, but they were most certainly aware of the "bonds of kinship" between their texts and those of writers in theNorth. If,when characterizing Latin American science fiction, nineteenth-century authors and texts are taken into account, itwill become clearer that the genre is more firmly anchored in Latin American literary and cultural history thanhas often been supposed. The genre should be seen not as just a space-age and computer-age phenomenon in Latin America, but as literature that has evolved over time, and has been adapted by Latin Americans to reflect theirperspectives and to say what could not, perhaps, have been expressed as well in any other way. A final note on what a better understanding of Latin American sf?early and later?can contribute to the Northerner's understanding of the genre: in the North, especially in theUnited States, we suffer from a certain myopia in our perception of the world and its literatures. The Argentine sf critic Pablo Capanna has described thisphenomenon as "the incapacity, characteristic of all imperial centers in history, to understand what occurs far from the center of power, or how thosewho live in the periphery think" (165). Latin American sf can provide some much needed correction to our vision; as Ginway puts it inher article, "A Working Model forAnalyzing Third World Science Fiction," "The subaltern or outsider position provides new and varied perspectives on hegemonic cultural production" (488). In his keynote address at the 2007 International Conference on the Fantastic in theArts, Geoff Ryman spoke of a science fiction as a "collective activity," as a "continuity," as "mass dream"; and he characterized the science fiction of the center (my term) as suffering from an ethnocentric view of theworld, from gender-bias, and from a limited view of the role of the "other" (we either shoot itor assimilate it).28Ryman then spoke of the potential for science fiction written in the periphery to help the genre to break away from its stereotypes and to contribute to the construction of a new mass dream. The retrolabeling of early Latin American science fiction is part of a process by which we are recognizing what Latin American writers have contributed, are contributing, and may contribute to the future of the genre. NOTES 1. As Brian Stableford writes in the entry on "Proto Science Fiction" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Hugo Gernsback clearly believed thathe was merely attaching a name to a genre which already existed" (965). Gernsback's "scientifiction" genre label had become "science fiction" by 1929. Like Stableford, I reserve the term "proto science fiction" for pre-nineteenth-century works. For texts written in the nineteenth century through 1926 I employ terms such as "early science fiction," "science-fictional," and "belonging to the science fiction tradition." 2. Gernsback was not the first to recognize the existence of an sf tradition; were nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers and readers of science-fictional texts well aware of the "loose bonds of kinship" of these texts to others. What Brian Stableford has written of scientific romance in Britain holds true as well for science fiction written in other Northern countries and in Latin America prior to 1926: What entitles us to think of scientific romances as a kind is not a set of classificatory characteristics which demarcate them as members of a set, but loose bonds of kinship

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which are only partly inherent in the imaginative exercises themselves and partly in the minds of authors and readers who recognise in them some degree of common cause. Vv^hat binds together the authors and books to be discussed here is mainly that they were perceived by the contemporary audience as similar to one another and different from others. (Scientific Romance 4) 3.1 am referring to the local reader base. Little science fiction from Latin American has been translated or reaches an international audience. A notable exception to this rule is the 2003 anthologyCosmos Latinos, edited by Andrea Bell and Yolanda Molina Gavilan and published in Wesley an University Press's "Early Classics of Science Fiction" series. Internet fanzines such as the Argentina-based Axxon () also make Latin American sf available to national and international readers of Spanish. 4. Gabriel Trujillo Munoz dates the change of fortune in the reception and the writing of Mexican science fiction from the 1968 publication of Carlos Olvera's Mejicanos en el espacio [Mexicans in Space], and he sees a similar trend in the rest of Latin America at around the same time:

[WithMejicanos en el espacio] for the first time in this genre, the future is not a superior stage of human evolution, but rather an avalanche of prejudices and complexes shared by all with humor and without shame. Since the 1970s, national [Mexican] science fiction, like Latin American sf, is taking new paths. Social criticism, a libertarian spirit, stylistic experimentation, and the search for less obvious themes are transforming the paradigms of the future visualized by the youngest creators. (Biogrqftas 346; my translation) The more recent phenomenon of retrolabeling the earliest works of Latin American sf is another sign of the increasing acceptance of the legitimacy of the genre there. 5. Gonzalez Echevarria defines hegemonic discourse as "one backed by a discipline, or embodying a system, that offers themost commonly accepted description of humanity and accounts for themost widely held beliefs of the intelligentsia"(41). 6. This lauding of Brazil's natural conditions for greatness, or "grandeza," permeates Brazilian culture and also Brazilian sf. For more on this topic see Ginway (Brazilian 21 22, 204, 220nl9); see also her contribution to the "Chronology of Latin American SF 1775-2005" (Molina-Gavilan etal., "Chronology"). 7. All translations in this paper are my own unless otherwise indicated. 8. While some of these texts were claimed for the genre earlier (Nic-Nac by Goligorsky in 1968, "Mexico 1970" by Staples in 1987), theyhave been consistently cited as foundational Latin American sf texts only inmore recent years. The bibliography in the entry on "Latin America" by Mauricio-Jose Schwarz and Braulio Tavares in the second editionof The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction listsBrasil 2000 andNic-Nac. All are three texts included in the important bibliography compiled by Yolanda Molina Gavilan et al. inChasqui in2000 and in theirrevised and updatedbibliography published inEnglish in this issue of SFS. 9. The identity of Fosforos-Cerillos has been variously posited as either Sebastian Camacho y Zulueta (FernandezDelgado in theChasqui and SFS bibliographies) or Jose Joaquin Mora (Trujillo Munoz, "El futuro en llamas" 12). Lacking definitive proof, I base my characterization of the writer on the content of "Mexico 1970" and on the fact that a number of other articles in the same issue of El Liceo Mexicano on sociocultural

and scientific themes are signed "Fosforos," "Fosforos-Cerillos," or "F.C." I take this to a on indicate certain degree of involvement the part of this writer in the journal and in the publication mission proclaimed in its Introduction. "Mexico 1970" is signed "Fosforos" at theend of thearticle itself(El Liceo Mexicano 348), and itsauthor is listed as "Fosforos-Cerillos" in the index at the back of the issue.

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10. I am indebted to Paul Alkon's discussions of the interplayof metafictional, realistic,and fantasticelements inhis Origins ofFuturistic Fiction (124-25, 193-206). 11. Here Alkon is summarizing and building upon ideas from Bronislaw Baczko's analysis ofMercier's L'An 2440 [TheYear 2440] inLumieres de Vutopie (165 n22). 12.There is some vacillation in theUtopian portrayal of theestranged society in the case of Nic-Nac. My analysis of Holmberg's representation of the relationship between Europe and Argentina is based on another of his texts in addition to Nic-Nac: the 1875 science-fictional work Dos partidos en lucha: Fantasia cientifica [Two Factions Struggle for theSurvival of theFittest: A ScientificFantasy]. 13. I am indebtedto Braulio Tavares and to the staffof theBiblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro for their help in acquiring copies of over a hundred pages of the manuscript. 14. This passage was also chosen from a number of possibilities because it provides fairlyclear evidence of the influenceof Mercier on Felicio dos Santos. A footnote in chapterone ofMercier's Memoirs of the Year 2500 reads: "The whole kingdom is in Paris. France resembles a ricketty child, whose juices seem only to encrease and nourish thehead, while thebody remainsweak and emaciated" (4). 15. Phase two of Brasil 2000 is still an account of a mediated history textbrought back from the year 2000. The text now includes the account of Pedro II's visit to the Brazil of the future, and the reader reads about it filtered, as usual, through the nineteenth-century editor et al. 16. I have changed this quotation from the plural to the singular. Originally it referred to both Joaquim Felicio dos Santos and his Brasil 2000 and to another, unlocatable, text by Justiniano Jose da Rocha. 17. The diversity of Holmberg's publications and his work as a scientific generalist at a time when specialization was increasingly valued is explained by Luis Holmberg as a necessary sacrifice during that generation in a country of "little scientific culture" (140 41). His reasoning shares a number of similarities with Nancy Stepan's arguments against the attempts by modern Latin American nations to reproduce the structures of Northern scientific research systems in the final chapter of her Beginnings of Brazilian Science. 18. In Nic-Nac the inhabitants of Mars are referred to as "Marcialitas" ["Martialites"], a nod to the warlike tendencies of some of the inhabitants. As these inhabitants only appear in a few chapters of the tale, we will use the more standard "Martians" to avoid confusion. 19. The two authorities mentioned, Mr. Gould and Dr. Uriarte, were public figures was an in Argentina at the time. Benjamin Gould (1824-96) American astronomer and thefirst director of theNational Observatory, established at Cordoba in 1871. Dr. Jose Maria Uriarte was the first director (1863-76) of San Buenaventura, a mental institution in Buenos Aires. 20. While Flammarion's belief inand defense of spiritismeventually damaged his as a scientist reputation in scientific circles, Holmberg continued his work respected throughout his career. Pages Larraya writes of Holmberg's attitude toward spiritism: "Although [Holmberg]may not have been a militant adept of thesepractices and even ... satirizes them it is common knowledge that they interested him greatly" (42). inMe Holmberg's treatment of spiritism is less satirical in other works of fiction, but more on te spiritism is used as a literary device. For the relationship between spiritism, see science, and the popularization of science, Moore (7, 19-22). 21. In the same article, Ortiz excludes Nic-Nac from the genre of science fiction (62 64), but the definition of sf that he uses does not take into account the permeable boundaries of the genre, especially at this time before it had been more rigidly codified by publishers, writers, critics, and tradition. Ortiz subsequently cites Verne,

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Flammarion, Poe, and Hoffmann as important influences on Holmberg's work, though he identifies these writers only with the fantastic (84). 22. In 1878 in El Naturalista Argentino Holmberg compared certain scientists unfavorably to Verne: "'Those men of science, who keep themselves completely isolated from the world that surrounds them without reaching them, are certainly not those who pour theheat and the lightof the truthonto thepopulace'" (qtd. inLuis Holmberg 136). Luis Holmberg identifies both Burmeister and "the German professors Sarmiento brought to form the Academy of Sciences in Cordoba" as being guilty of sundry acts of inaccessibilityin theeyes of his father(139). 23. For further examples of Holmberg's declaration of Argentine scientific independencefrom Europe, see Luis Holmberg (4) and Eduardo Holmberg,Dospartidos (90, 113, 133). 24. For more on Holmberg's views on Christianity and the relationship between science and religion, see Luis Holmberg, chapter 9. 25. See, for example, the discussion of Brasil 2000 above. 26. For a good discussion of the trajectory of Latin American sf, see Bell and Molina-Gavilan ("Introduction" 4-10). 27. A direct linecan be tracedfrom Holmberg toLeopoldo Lugones (1874-1938) to Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) and on to JorgeLuis Borges (1899-1986) andAdolfo Bioy Casares (1914-99). 28. The text of this address has not yet been published, and so my comments are on own see a based my notes taken at the talk. Please Ryman's text in forthcoming issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts for a complete representation of his views on this and other sf matters.

EDITIONS OF PRIMARY TEXTS (* indicateseditions] cited) * Felicio dos Santos, Joaquim. "Paginas da historia do Brasil escripta no anno de 2000." O JequitinhonhaAug. 23, 1868-1872. *-. "Paginas da historia do Brasil escrita no ano de 2000 [Excerpts]." Revista do Livro II.6 (1957): 103-60. * Fosforos-Cerillos. "Mexico en el ano 1970." El Liceo Mexicano 1 (1844): 347-48. -. "Mexico en el ano 1970." Ed. Anne Staples. Cienciay desarrolio 12.73 (1987): 149-52. -. "Mexico en el ano de 1970 [sic]." 1844. El futuro en llamas: Cuentos cldsicos de la ciencia ficcion mexicana. 1844. Ed. Gabriel Trujillo Munoz. Mexico City: Grupo Editorial Vid, 1997. 37-44. Holmberg, Eduardo Ladislao. "Viaje maravilloso del senor Nic-Nac [Selections]." 1875 76. Los argentinos en la tuna. Ed. Eduardo Goligorsky. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de laFlor, 1968. 15-31. -. Viaje maravilloso del senor Nic-Nac alplaneta Marte. 1875-76. Coleccion Los Raros. Ed. Pablo Crash Solomonoff. Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional; Ediciones Colihue, 2006. senor *-. Viaje maravilloso del Nic-Nac en el que se refieren las prodijiosas aventuras de este senor y se dan a conocer las instituciones, costumbres y un preocupaciones de mundo desconocido: Fantasia espiritista. Buenos Aires: El Nacional, 1875. -. senor en "Viaje maravilloso del Nic-Nac el que se refieren las prodijiosas aventuras de este senor y se dan a conocer las instituciones, costumbres y un preocupaciones de mundo desconocido: Fantasia espiritista." El Nacional 29 Nov. 1875-13 Mar. 1876, sec. Folletin del Lunes.

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WORKS CITED Alkon, Paul K. Origins ofFuturistic Fiction. Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1987. -. Science Fiction before 1900: ImaginationDiscovers Technology. 1994. Ed. Ron Gottesman. New York: Routledge, 2002. Baczko, Bronislaw. Lumieres de Vutopie. Paris: Payot, 1978. Bell, Andrea L., and Yolanda Molina-Gavilan. "Introduction: Science Fiction in Latin America and Spain." Cosmos Latinos: An Anthologyof Science Fiction fromLatin America and Spain. Eds. Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilan. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003. 1-19. Burns, E. Bradford. A History of Brazil. 3rd ed. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. Capanna, Pablo. "Entrevista con Pablo Capanna (Interview by Eduardo Carletti)." Axxon 106 (2000): 162-70. 15Nov. 2004 . Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. The History and Adventures of theRenowned Don Quixote. 1605. Trans. Tobias Smollett. 1761. Athens: U ofGeorgia P, 2003. Clarke, I.F. Tales of the Future: From the Beginning to the Present Day. 3rd ed. London: Library Association, 1978. Clute, John. "Sleeper Awakes." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Ed. JohnClute and Peter Nicholls. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. 1115-16. Edwards, Malcolm J., and Brian Stableford. "Time Travel." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. 1227-29.

Eulalio, Alexandre. "As paginas do ano de 2000: Joaquim Felicio Dos Santos." Revista doLivro 11.6(1957): 103-108. Felicio dos Santos, Joaquim. "A Historia Do Brasil Escrita Pelo Dr. Jeremias No Ano De 2862." 1868-72.Revista doUvro II.6 (1957): 111-13. Flammarion, Camille. Lumen. 1887. Trans, anded. Brian Stableford. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2002. Frye, Northrop. "Varieties of Literary Utopias." Utopias and Utopian Thought. Ed. Frank Edward Manuel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. 25-49. Garcia Canclini, Nestor. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Trans. Christopher L. Chiappari and Silvia L. Lopez. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. Gernsback, Hugo. "A New Sort of Magazine." Amazing Stories 1.1 (Apr. 1926): 3. Ginway,M. Elizabeth. Brazilian Science Fiction: CulturalMyths and Nationhood in the Land of theFuture. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2004. -. "AWorking Model forAnalyzing ThirdWorld Science Fiction: The Case of Brazil." SFS32.3 (2005): 467-94. Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto. Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative. 1990. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1998. en Goligorsky, Eduardo, ed. Los argentinos la tuna. Buenos Aires: La Flor, 1968 Haywood Ferreira, Rachel. "The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction: A Global Genre in thePeriphery." Diss. Yale University, 2003. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2003. 3109406. en Holmberg, Eduardo Ladislao. Dos partidos lucha: Fantasia cientifica. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de El Arjentino, 1875. Holmberg, Luis. Holmberg el ultimo enciclopedista. Buenos Aires: Colombo, 1952. "Introduction." El Liceo Mexicano 1.1 (1844): 3-4. Jameson, Fredric. "Progress Versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future?" SFS 9.2 (1982): 147-58. Ludmer, Josefina. El cuerpo del delito: Un manual. Buenos Aires: Perfil Libros, 1999.

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Machado, Ubiratan. Os intelectuais e o espiritismo: De Castro Alves a Machado de Assis. Rio de Janeiro: Edicoes Antares; Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1983. Magalhaes, Basil io de. Estudos da historia do Brasil. Sao Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1940. McLemee, Scott. "Back to the Future." New York Times Book Review. 24 Dec. 2000, 23.

Mercier, Louis-Sebastien. Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred. Ill I. Trans. W. Hooper. Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1795. New York: Sentry, 1973. Meyer, Michael C, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds. The Course ofMexican History. 6th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Molina-Gavilan, Yolanda, Andrea Bell, Miguel Angel Fernandez Delgado, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Luis Pestarini, and Juan Carlos Toledano. "Chronology of Latin American Science Fiction, 1775-2005." SFS 34.3 (2007): 369-431. -. "Cronologia de cf latinoamericana: 1775-1999." Chasqui 29.2 (2000): 43-72. Moore, R. Laurence. In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. Voyages to theMoon. New York: Macmillan, 1948. Ortiz, Eduardo L. "On the Transition from Realism to the Fantastic in the Argentine Literature of the 1870s: Holmberg and the Cordoba Six." Science and the Creative Imagination in Latin America. Eds. Evelyn Fishburn and Eduardo L. Ortiz. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2005. 59-85. Pages Larraya, Antonio. "Estudio preliminar." Cuentos fantdsticos. Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg. Buenos Aires: Libreria Hachette, 1957. 7-98. Rodriguez, Julia. Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and theModern State. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 2006. Ryman, Geoff. "In Praise of Science Fiction." 28th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Hilton Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 15 Mar. 2007.

Schwarz, Mauricio-Jose, and Braulio Tavares. "Latin America." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. 693-97.

Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. Latin American Histories. New York; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Stableford, Brian M. "Introduction." Lumen. Trans. Brian M. Stableford. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2002. ix-xxxv. -. "Proto Science Fiction." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. 965-67. Staples, Anne. "Una primitiva ciencia ficcion en Mexico." Ciencia y desarrollo 73 (Mar./Apr. 1987): 145-52. -. Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950. London: Fourth Estate, 1985. Stepan, Nancy. Beginnings of Brazilian Science: Oswaldo Cruz, Medical Research and Policy, 1890-1920. New York: Science History Publications, 1976. Suarez de la Torre, Laura. "Los intereses de las principales casas editoriales de la Ciudad de Mexico entre 1840 y 1855." Literatura mexicana del otrofin de siglo. Ed. Rafael Olea Franco. Mexico City: Colegio de Mexico, 2001. 577-93. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1979. Teixeira Neves, Jose. "Joaquim Felicio Dos Santos: Estudo biografico." Memorias do Distrito Diamantino da Comarca do Serro Frio, Provincia de Minas Gerais. By Joaquim Felicio dos Santos. 3rd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Edicoes O Cruzeiro, 1956. 19 30.

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Trujillo Munoz, Gabriel. Biografias del futuro: La ciencia ficcion mexicana y sus autores. Mexicali, Mexico: Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, 2000. -. "El futuro en llamas: Breve cronica de la ciencia ficcion mexicana." El futuro en llamas: Cuentos cldsicos de la cienciaficcion mexicana. Ed. Gabriel Trujillo Munoz. Mexico City: Grupo Editorial Vid, 1997. 7-29. ABSTRACT

This essay examines three of the earliest works of Latin American sf together for the first time: "Mexico en el ano 1970" [Mexico in theYear 1970, 1844,Mexico], Pdginas da historia do Brasil escripta no anno de 2000 [Pages from theHistory of Brazil Written in theYear 2000, 1868-72,Brazil], and Viaje maravilloso del SenorNic-Nac al planeta Marte [The Marvelous Journey of Mr. Nic-Nac to the Planet Mars, 1875-76, Argentina]. Nineteenth-century works such as these have been added to the genealogical tree of Latin American sf in recent years. The addition of pre-space-age texts to the corpus of Latin American sf does more than provide its writers and readers with local roots: it broadens our understanding of the genre in Latin America and the periphery; it extends our perceptions of the role of science inLatin American literature and culture; and, together with later Latin American sf, it contributes new perspectives and new narrative possibilities to the genre as a whole.

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